Chapter 55 — What the Paper Could Do

I asked Ron about Ginny when I returned. He looked across the common room before answering, as though hoping to find her doing something ordinary enough to settle the question. She had been quiet, he said, but he had thought it was starting school and becoming embarrassed whenever Harry spoke to her. I repeated Luna’s description of her seeming frightened.

Ron went to speak to her later that day. I was close enough to hear him ask whether anything was wrong. Ginny said she was fine and had work to finish. When he asked whether somebody was bothering her, she shook her head quickly, pulling her bag closer against her side.

I could imagine a younger sister declining to explain herself to a brother in the common room. That did not tell me whether she was worried about something she needed help with. I mentioned it to Percy too, and he promised to speak to her. For the moment, there was little more I could learn by watching her refuse to tell us, though I would have preferred a more reassuring answer.

My own work had reached another question. The close-spread binding was useful, but I wanted to deal with a hard object without relying on throwing it into the next hard object. Impello could move things. Increasing the force did not necessarily make it the right spell for breaking them, however satisfying the result might look when the target happened to hit a wall.

I found the Reductor Curse in a book beyond our ordinary Charms work and took the passage to Flitwick. He read it, then looked over the page to ask what I intended to reduce. I said practice targets, to begin with. He approved the beginning and told me we would keep it that way while discovering what I could manage.

He arranged somewhere to work and supplied targets I could damage without receiving a bill for the furniture. I brought treated paper, my brush and the best ordinary ink available to me. Having watched a spell happen did not tell my hand how to construct its inscription. Most of the first session demonstrated the difference between recognising the words on a page and understanding the effect.

Flitwick reduced a small block to fragments with a quick movement of his wand. I watched, asked him about the part I had missed and returned to my notes. When I finally threw my first prepared strip and spoke the curse, it burned without damaging the target. The block remained in the sand tray, undeservedly intact after all the attention I had given it.

‘The word was clear,’ Flitwick said. ‘Examine what you were asking the magic to do.’ I looked again at the inscription I had recorded. Too much of the familiar pushing pattern had followed me into the new work. Knowing how to do one thing was proving a difficulty when I kept trying to make it do another.

On the second attempt, dust came from one corner. I altered the preparation again, and the third sent a crack through the block. Only after Flitwick nodded did I approach the tray. Two pieces lay where one had been, their fresh faces considerably more interesting to me than the undamaged surface I had spent the session looking at.

I wanted to prepare another at once. Flitwick made me explain what I had changed first, which became unexpectedly difficult now that I was excited about the result. He waited while I worked through it instead of accepting that the third version was better because the target had broken. By the time I finished, I could see why he had stopped me reaching for fresh paper.

The following sessions taught me more about keeping the effect where I aimed. Stone and metal responded differently, and a thin target did not behave like a thick one. I spoiled pieces by hurrying. Then I spoiled more by altering several things together and losing track of which change mattered, a method of wasting materials Hermione could identify before I finished describing it.

Eventually I prepared a few pieces worth keeping. I wrapped them separately and marked their place in my pouch, away from the water strips. Reaching for a preparation while distracted had become enough of a habit that I wanted the difference obvious to my fingers as well as my eyes. A destructive curse was an unpleasant thing to discover I had mistaken for something else.

Flitwick watched me put them away. ‘Breaking the target tells you little about where the pieces will go,’ he said. ‘Remember the tray.’ I looked at the marks inside it and promised I would. The broken blocks had made me pleased with myself; the sides of the tray provided a useful addition to that assessment.

Work on laid talismans continued alongside the new curse. We already knew a spell I released could wake a prepared piece in its path. I had relied on that below the trapdoor, but a desperate success was a poor substitute for something I could set up dependably. I wanted to stop describing the successful arrangement as though it were an occasion we might never repeat.

Harry moved the targets and Ron checked their spacing. Hermione recorded what actually happened, including results I would have preferred to call nearly successful. I worked on the inscriptions and the direction of release. Each trial began with a fresh strip thrown from my hand and a spoken Impello, so the first cause remained mine rather than anything the waiting paper decided to do.

Sometimes the arriving pulse tore a laid piece. Sometimes its spell opened at the wrong angle. We kept the small bursts inside the practice enclosure and learnt which arrangements were attractive only when drawn on a page. Replacing damaged preparations became less annoying once I could point to a useful reason why the next trial differed from the last.

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One afternoon the final strip in a short sequence released where I intended. I stared at the result long enough for Ron to ask whether he should move the targets, and told him to wait while Hermione finished writing. Then we reset the arrangement. I made fresh preparations, checked the distances and began again.

It worked a second time. I asked Ron whether the gap was the same, although I had watched him measure it. He confirmed it and showed me the mark. Hermione asked whether I wanted the record to say we had been lucky twice. I grinned before answering that she could write what had happened, which was a rare occasion when I liked the sound of every part.

The laid pieces still needed my magic. They did not respond to a passing foot or decide to release after an interval I named, and the bursts remained small. I could not place paper round the castle and expect it to choose who belonged inside. What I could do was repeat an arrangement and understand more of why it worked, which was enough to make me redraw it that evening without a question mark beside the final strip.

Dad’s notes had given me places to begin. The arrangement now on our table had come from the work we had done since, including the pages full of failures I had briefly wanted to discard. I kept those beside the successful diagram. It was easier to remember their value after the result had stopped irritating me.

Other parts of life went well enough to make the days feel ordinary. Harry reached the Snitch before Ravenclaw’s Seeker, and Gryffindor finished comfortably ahead. Wood celebrated by describing several parts of the match which needed improving. Listening to him, I wondered what he would find to say if we ever lost.

Hufflepuff made us work for the openings. The new brooms helped, but Cedric’s team did not treat the equipment as a reason to stop trying. Harry found the Snitch first again. By the time everyone reached the common room, enough people were singing to make explaining any quieter achievement difficult.

Two wins encouraged Wood and made Ron predict most of the season. They did not award us the Quidditch Cup in October, however certain he sounded. The Quidditch table was not the whole House Cup competition either, though he expected success there too. I enjoyed seeing the equipment used well without believing we could put away the rest of the year’s work.

After the cheering, Harry explained a turn he had made. I followed the first account reasonably well, then began losing track as he found more details worth repeating. Eventually I went to retrieve my trial notes. I was willing to celebrate his interests, but I had been waiting all afternoon to examine a different sort of successful turn.

Luna sometimes asked about the diagrams. She did not pretend to understand an inscription merely because I had written it. Instead she would ask what a gap meant or why a line was crossed out, then listen to the answer. Once I found what had gone wrong halfway through explaining a failure to her, and she seemed as pleased as I was when I stopped to write it down.

We still had the unicorn’s blood and horn. Both stayed where Hermione had agreed to keep them, unused while we continued comparing what we could learn. There was plenty to investigate without adding an uncertain material simply because it was available. Having made progress elsewhere did not remove the promise or make its meaning clearer.

Dobby’s warning remained unanswered too. Harry had heard nothing more from him, and we had no new way to ask about the barrier. Every quiet day made the question easier to leave beside the others for which we lacked a useful next step. By the end of October, I had begun expecting tomorrow to resemble today, a habit the castle had done little to deserve.

Then McGonagall changed one of Harry’s detentions. He had trained hard that afternoon and was to help Lockhart with correspondence instead of joining Ron for another session in the trophy room. Harry received the news with cautious relief. Ron looked as though the difference between the two jobs would be difficult to appreciate while he was doing all the polishing.

At dinner, Ron sat with rounded shoulders and a hand resting round his cup. His work was finished; Harry’s place remained empty. He said he was beginning to know the names on the trophies better than those of people in our year. I suggested that this might be useful if anybody asked about school history, which he dismissed on the reasonable ground that nobody asked about the parts he knew.

Seamus wondered whether Ron might one day polish a trophy bearing his own name. Neville asked if that would mean receiving detention for winning it. Ron looked between them, then returned to his plate with injured dignity. I passed him the pudding nearest my elbow before the discussion could turn his future achievements into additional chores.

‘You can’t blame Harry,’ I said. ‘He didn’t choose it.’ Ron acknowledged that and added that he could still be annoyed. That seemed fair enough, provided Harry was not expected to apologise for the arrangement. Hermione looked towards the doors again and said he should have finished by now.

We waited longer than I intended. When Harry still did not appear, she suggested bringing him something to eat. I wrapped food from the table while Ron protested that he had not finished his pudding. He dealt with that obstacle at impressive speed and came with us, still looking more energetic when eating than when discussing the trophies.

The passages grew quiet as we left the Hall behind. Ron speculated about the kind of person who sought advice from a man unable to retrieve his own wand from a pixie. Hermione replied that one disastrous practical lesson did not make every sentence in his books false. I thought they could both continue until Harry had missed breakfast too.

‘We deliver the food first,’ I said. ‘You can argue about the letters on the way back.’ They followed me round the next corner, where a figure appeared so suddenly that I stopped with one hand half raised. Harry scarcely glanced at the parcel. His face was pale, and he kept one hand against the wall.

‘Did you hear it?’ he asked. I listened before answering. Distant conversation reached us from downstairs, with a draught and the small sounds of our own movements nearer by. I asked what he meant, and his head turned as though something had moved beyond my hearing.

A voice, he said. He had heard it in Lockhart’s office, and now it was here. Hermione looked at me. I passed the food to Ron and moved nearer Harry, watching his fingers tighten against the stone. Whatever he was following along the wall, it had frightened him more than the teacher’s correspondence could explain.

I asked whether he could make out words. He nodded without looking away from the place he was listening to. ‘It wants to kill,’ he said, and I listened again, unable to find anything in the silence which would tell me how to help him.